shaking up the academy? or how the academy could shake up teaching

Last week I spent a couple of days down in Wellington, attending the annual symposium for the Ako Aotearoa Academy. The Academy’s made up of the winners of the national Tertiary Teaching Excellence Awards, so there are around 150 or so of us now. While only 35 members were able to make it to this year’s event (& the executive committee will survey everyone to see if there’s a better time – having said that, everyone seems so busy that there’s probably no date that would suit everyone!), we had a great line-up of speakers & everyone left feeling inspired & energised. I’ll blog about several of those presentations, but thought I would start with one by Peter Coolbear, who’s the director of our parent body, Ako Aotearoa.

Peter began by pointing out that the Academy is potentially very influential – after all, it’s made up of tertiary teachers recognised at the national level for the quality of their teaching, & who foster excellence in learning & teaching at their own institutions. But he argued – & I agree with him – that there is room for us to become involved in the wider scene. Peter had a number of suggestions for us to consider.

First up, there’s a lot going on in the area of policy – are there areas where the Academy might be expected to have & express an opinion? For example

There’s the latest draft of the Tertiary Education Strategy (TES), which “sets out the Government’s long-term strategic direction for tertiary education; and its current and medium-term priorities for tertiary education.” There’s a link to the Minister’s speech announcing the launch of the draft strategy here.

In addition, the State Services Commission’s document Better Public Services: results for New Zealanders sets out 10 targets across 5 areas. Targets 5 & 6 are relevant here as they are a reference point for government officials looking at evidence for success in the education sector. (Such scrutiny is likely to become more intense in light of the 2012 PISA results, which have just been made public.) Target 5 expects that we’ll “[increase] the proportion of 18-year-olds with NCEA level 2 or equivalent qualification”; #6 is looking for an increase in ” the proportion of 25 to 34-year-olds with advanced trade qualifications, diplomas and degrees (at level 4 or above)”. This will increase the pressure on institutions to increase retention & completion rates – might this have an effect on standards?

There’s also the requirement to achieve parity of success for ‘priority’ learners, especially Maori & Pasifika – this is priority #3 in the TES. (Kelly Pender, from Bay of Plenty Polytech, gave an inspirational presentation on how he weaves kaupapa Maori into pretty much everything he does in his classroom, in an earlier session.) And it’s an important one for us to consider. Peter cited data from the Ministry of Education’s website, ‘Education Counts’, which showed significantly lower completion rates for Maori & Pasifika students in their first degrees compared to European students, and commented that this will likely become a major issue for the universities in the near future.

If we’re to meet those achievement requirements, then how institutions scaffold learners into higher-level study, through foundation & transition programs, will become increasingly important. What are the best ways to achieve this?

Peter predicted increased accountability for the university sector (including governance reform). Cycle 5 of NZ’s Academic Audits has begun, and “is to be framed around academic activities related to teaching and learning and student support.” This is definitely one I’d expect Academy members to have an opinion on!

He also expects strengthened quality assurance processes throughout the education sector: this suggests a stronger (& more consistent) role for the NZ Qualifications Authority, with the development of partnership dialogues across the sector (ie including universities).

Then, at the level of the providers (ie the educational institutions themselves – & that’s not just the polytechs & universities), we have:

a government-led drive to get more learners into the ‘STEM’ subjects (science, technology, engineering, & maths) – this poses some interesting challenges as, at university level, we’re seeing quite a few students who’ve not taken the right mix of subjects, at the right NCEA level, to go directly into some of the STEM papers they need for, say, an engineering degree;

the rise in Massive Open On-line Courses, or MOOCs. (I find these quite strange creatures as they are free to the student and typically attract very large enrolments, but also apparently have very low completion rates. What’s in them for the institution? A good way of offering ‘taster’ courses that hook students in?)

the likelihood that we will see the development of a system for professional accreditation of tertiary teachers (I’ve written about this previously and will write another post fairly soon, as accreditation was the subject of a thought-provoking session at the symposium);

how we achieve protection of academic standards – it’s possible that government policies (eg those linking funding to completion & retention rates) may result in a tendency to exclude of underprepared kids &/or lowering standards – neither is desirable but both are possible results of those policies.

That’s a big list and the Academy can’t do everything! So, what should it focus on? (This is not a rhetorical question – it would be great to get some discussion going.) The Academy, in the person of its members, is effectively a resource; a body of expertise – can it become a ‘go-to’ body for advice? Speaking personally I think we need to make that shift; otherwise we remain invisible outside our individual institutions & the teaching-focused activities we’re involved in, & in a politicised world that’s not a comfortable thing to be. Can we, for example, better promote the significance of teaching excellence outside the education sector? Become involved in the discussions around & development of any accreditation scheme? Develop position papers around maintaining teaching excellence in the context of the new TES?

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Hi Alison. Great summary of what sounds to have been an excellent conference. I agree, it’s SO important that Ako Aotearoa, supported by the Academy, continues some high-level work to benefit students and staff in tertiary education across the board.

When I was in the UK in 2012, I met with colleagues who were involved in staff development at York St John University. This is a predominantly teaching university, but the head of the staff development unit said they were still trying to ensure that by 2016, all their staff had tertiary teaching qualifications as there was government pressure to ensure that this occurs. League tables showing which universities had what numbers of tertiary-teaching-accredited staff were being proposed. So the issue of ensuring that staff have appropriate skills when they’re involved in tertiary teaching may well start to be mandated by government here too, based on past patterns.

Personally, I think a system such as the Higher Education Academy Fellowships (similar to the HERDSA Fellowship Scheme implemented when I was a Vice President of HERDSA a good number of years back) might be a model to follow. It seems to me that while we have many excellent teachers in tertiary education here, there are some who are EXTREMELY resistant to any form of ‘structured, mandated’ tertiary teaching programmes, whether they patently need the skills or not! The various Fellowship schemes enable these staff to engage in teaching improvement/reflection without having to to through any form of ‘cookie cutter’ qualifications. And at the risk of blatant advertising, the Post-Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Teaching that the University of Waikato offers also enables this kind of individually tailored teaching development, as I know do some other tertiary qualifications at postgrad level.

All the best to the Academy and Ako with this important work, and I hope that others will join the conversation around how best to go forward in this area. If we’re not proactive, we may end up with the ‘cookie cutter’ scheme inflicted on us!